Chapter 4.2

"How about it, shall we exorcise the day's misfortunes?" Hirosawa said, earning a nod from Mutou. Yuuki had no objections, so he followed along with the two.

It was after the Gotouda funeral service. It was the first time Yuuki had participated in a burial ceremony, seeing a coffin being buried beneath the earth. The coffins used in the village had no small window to view the face. There was no final viewing at the crematory to follow driving the nail into the coffin after the funeral. Maybe that was why even burying the coffin in the hole, the sense of burying the dead themselves seemed so distant, missing that feeling as if the dead were departed for eternity that came with the ashes being presented from the crematory. There was a strange nuance of a difference between the separation in this to that of cremation.

Hirosawa and Yuuki went towards the heart of the village--called Sotoba---to a shop located just outside of the shopping district.

Yuuki was fascinated. Having lived in the village for a year now, he too had needs that brought him to the shopping district frequently. He realized that separated out from it was this building. Furnished with white terracotta, it had a black wooden door beneath a sunken in alcove, with ground glass. It looked to be a shop of some sort but, due to the ground glass making him unable to see inside of the shop, and with the small window that faced outward being made of stained glass, in the end he never was able to peek in. The shop's name was "creole" if he recalled. It was in the crushed glass in golden roman letters but Yuuki didn't know what the word was, much less what kind of shop it was. It had caught his attention every time he'd seen the shop but, without anything he really need of it, he thought he'd ask Mutou about it one day, then kept forgetting about it.

Hirosawa opened the door and the cool air from the air conditioner and the soft sound of piano music flowed out. There was a counter and a small table, the smell of coffee; it was a cafe, Yuuki blinked.

"Welcome."

At the counter was a man in his mid-forties. He wore a white shirt and black pants. He had the air of a bartender. Hirosawa didn't hesitate to sit at the counter. Yuuki and Mutou lined themselves there as well.

"You match. Was there some misfortune?"

Hirosawa nodded at his friendly voice. As he called for an iced coffee, Yuuki did the same.

"The Mourning Crew, yes. ---This is," Hirosawa began, motioning to Yuuki. "Yuuki-san. This is the manager, Hasegawa-san."

Nice to meet you, Hasegawa greeted with a smile. "You're Yuuki-san from the Workshop, aren't you? It's a pleasure."

"Liksewise. ....So it was a cafe then, this place."

At Yuuki's words, Hasegawa's voice rose in a laugh. "We also serve food and at night we serve alcohol as well, though."

"This man here," said Mutou with a pout. "He avoids putting a sign out on purpose."

"Is there a reason for that? I mean, I noticed the shop myself but, since I didn't know what kind of shop it was, I passed. Even though I'd been looking for a cozy little cafe."

"You'll have to excuse me. Please allow me to take this opportunity to accept your patronage," said Hasegawa, a hidden meaning to his smile. "It's quite all right, like this. If I don't put one out, the little old men and women won't make a haunt of this humble shop. I must most humbly pass on playing the music popularly requested or being told to make Natto for lunch. Indeed, arrogant as it is, I am selective in this way about my clientele."

"So it's hard to approach," Mutou said with a glare. "A cafe that won't put out a sign, writing the name in western letters, he does it to make it hard to read on purpose, this man here."

"How is that read, anyway?"

"It's creole," said Hirosawa. "Yuuki-san, how do you feel about jazz?"

"I don't hate it. So I see, it's that creole, is it. But, in that case, isn't that Dixie?" asked Yuuki with a laugh. "Shouldn't it be Chick Corea?"

"You got me," said Hasegawa with a broad smile. "Precisely the type of customer this humble shop has been waiting for."

Yuuki chuckled.

"Hasegawa-san is also a part of the moved-in group," Hirosawa said with his own smile. "Though, his wife is originally from Sotoba, however."

"Ah--is that right?"

"You're going on three years now, is it?" Hirosawa asked, earning a nod from Hasegawa.

"Three and a half. I'm just grateful we've managed to stay in business. When we'd first moved I'd worried my wife would have to work the fields but, as it is we've had a few people bless us as regulars."

"It might not be my place to ask this but, why Sotoba?"

Hasegawa gave a cynical smile. "I used to work at a trading firm actually. Until four years ago when we lost our son."

Yuuki's was at a loss for words.

"Ah, please don't mind it. It was sudden, a motorcycle accident. We were dispirited. You could say that we lost our sense of footing in the city, perhaps. My wife had only her father left, but he died as if following after our son. So we'd moved. Best open a cafe and retire together with my wife, I thought."

"Is that so. Does your wife work in the shop?"

"She is out at the moment. The dinner hour is a touch early. Lunch and dinner, and afterwards, those are the busies hours."

"You also serve lunch?"

"But only simple things and the daily special. Dinner is a similar affair. Our fundamentals are coffee and liquor, you see."

"But what a relief. Sotoba's a great place but, there wasn't a single place to drink."

"You think so too?" Hasegawa said with a smile. "When I'd thought, 'let's move to Sotoba', that was first on my mind. 'But, in Sotoba there's no place to drink, no cafe', I'd thought. So, I'd started one myself. I'd been interested in it before. It's really half hobby to me."

Hirosawa smiled as Yuuki nodded in understanding before he looked to Hirosawa.

"And how was school to---ah, it's currently summer vacation, isn't it."

"But really, I had to come here for a little while. I need a break today."

"You've worked hard. As it's hot, it must have been difficult."

"Yes and no, you could say. It was prearranged."

"Arranged?" Yuuki asked; Hirosawa nodded.

"The graveyard. The burial plot was already emptied, wasn't it?"

"Aa...."

"As we bury, for each death there needs to be a plot the size of one coffin. But, we also plant a fir there. At the end of the mourning period, the sotoba is taken down and a fir is planted. As recent deaths come about and the plots of land are needed, the oldest firs are cut down and the soil is prepared. That's what we mean by arrangements, but if someone hasn't made arrangements it really is tiring. Especially during the summer when the burial can't be put off for the arrangements."

"A tree is cut down? By us?"

"We have had to do it before. For the most part, we rely on the Yasumori Contractors, however. In the summer if we don't ask them, it couldn't be done in time."

"Yasumori Contractors---Ah, in Monzen. They also do that sort of thing?"

"There isn't much construction in the village. Most of the jobs that they do in the village are graveyard preparations. The old missus Gotouda had just asked the contractors this past spring. The soil was still soft, so in a way it was a great help but putting your son in in your place is a pitiable story."

"In Sotoba, you make arrangements before you die?"

"There are people who do. Parents grow old and look at their remaining years, and wanting to pass without anything left undone to fluster others, oversee their own graveyard preparations. It's not unusual per-say but it isn't as if everybody does it. Old missus Gotouda was a dedicated, kindly mother."

"....Yes she was."

"It really is a pitiable story. It truly puts one at a loss for words. If someone elderly dies after battle with a long illness, it's a relief to the bereaved family in a way as well, and if they also have been able to prepare themselves, they may have given up already. But, for a parent who'd suddenly lost a child, I wonder if there are any words in the world that could offer any relief."

Hasegawa gave a meaningful nod to Hirosawa's words. Mutou, too, had a serious expression. Hirosawa gazed into his glass.

"I have a daughter who will be turning four and, if I try to imagine the day she dies, trying to think of anything comforting feels like nonsense to me."

Yuuki's only son's face floated to mind. "....That is definitely true."

As he approached old age, with only his son left, if he had prepared for his own impending death, to have his son go before him... He was overwhelmed by the thought of a surviving parent's grief. He remembered Fuki's heartbreaking, broken visage. Alone amongst the hustle and bustle of the funeral service, shrinking into herself as if she'd lost any support, any place to be, the form of one resolutely bearing her suffering. Nobody could find the words to offer to her, he was sure. The old mother sat isolated from the people around. ---No.

Yuuki drew his brows together slightly. The people around her, rather, didn't appear to pay Fuki herself any mind at all. Nobody had concerned themselves with the old mother who had lost her son. The people there's interest was instead in Yamairi.

"....What was with that," Yuuki murmured, Hirosawa turning his head.

"It's nothing," Yuuki dismissed with a forced smile. "But it was Shuuji-kun's funeral, while the fuss was all about something else. Somehow, I'd gotten myself wrapped up in the idea that in a small community like this, in a situation like that a bereaved family would be supported by neighborly warmth."

Hirosawa and Mutou exchanged looks. Hirosawa gave a troubled smile.

"Indeed---at today's service, Shuuji-kun and Fuki-san were both ignored for talk of Yamairi."

That was like some kind of festival. He knew the village was starved for a topic. There were those in the area who delighted at a case like this. But, at least while there seated at the funeral, they didn't need to be so excited about it; Hirosawa could certainly understand someone thinking as much.

"And furthermore, what happened was a complete disaster. Three elders from this very village met with an unnatural death, didn't they? I understand that that's a big affair, so I understand that it'd be impossible for talk of it not to come up when meeting for the funeral but, I don't think that it's something they should have been talking so excitedly about. It was a tragedy that befell the community as a whole---I don't think that's the proper way to treat such a thing."

"Yuuki-san, you remember the mushiokuri, don't you?" Hirosawa said quietly. "We marched from hokora to hokora bearing the Betto, didn't we?"

"Ah---yes." Yuuki tilted his head. Hirosawa may have been about to say something abruptly, and in a moment was at a loss for how to put his thoughts in order.

"The traveler's guardians in the hokora... are the gods on the roads, aren't they?"

"I think it may be better to call them the gods of the boundary, myself. In Sotoba there are many travelers' guardians. They may be in the form of Jizo or Koushin mounds but they're all made of stone, and their nature is clearly to serve the role of travelers' guardians. The border of inside and outside of the village, they're the gods of that boundary."

Yuuki blinked. "I'm sorry. I'm a bit lost on where you're...."

"Pardon," said Hirosawa with a smile. "The traveler's guardians are fundamentally the gods of the boundary between the inside and outside. We call our own affairs 'internal' or 'ours', don't we? That doesn't refer only to your own home as a building, it's more of a conceptional idea. You and your own space, your family and the memories tied in with them, there are various things caught up in the image of what we call 'internal' or 'ours', aren't there?"

"Ah, certainly."

"When talking about buildings, the boundary line for 'inside' is clear. It's the walls of the house, or perhaps the boundary lines of the property. It's known to be denoted by the walls or the fence surrounding a space but, at any rate, there's a boundary where you can say from here to here is my house, isn't there? Even so, the image we have for 'internal' or 'ours' has no such clear boundary. Beyond the 'inner', distinctly unable to be defined inner or outer, is a gray zone. It's the space that's sometimes internal and sometimes external."

[TL/N: Uchi and Soto, Inner and Outer, Us and Them

- Hirosawa engages Yuuki in a discussion of uchi and soto. Popular terms in Nihonjinron, or the study of Japanese people and their culture, they are often even left untranslated in English language discussions. 

Here

is an excellent and brief summarizing article that requires no knowledge of Japanese to follow, and relates to the behaviors and feelings discussed in the chapter. The

Wikipedia article

on the subject focuses more on the linguistic aspect than the actions taken as a result. There are full essays and even full books available on the various aspects of uchi and soto.

Your translator posits that the concept is not so uniquely Japanese as to lose anything in translation when put into English terms or require a note on the words themselves to follow the text, but feedback is welcomed and it can be put back as uchi/soto if readers believe it's an improvement. In a comment below, I will post the translation of the blurbs with uchi and soto left as they are in the original text.

However universal a concept is, it bares mention how concrete it is

in Japanese, to the point of being necessarily understood in order to be competent (not even fluent) in the language.

Uchi

is a word that can literally mean 'myself' or 'us' as well as 'inside';

soto

or outside is never used as any second or third person pronoun.

Japanese verbs have an optional, psychologically directional inflection. An example is the verb suffix -kureru which form implies a benefit coming to the speaker from the verb to which it is affixed. 

If Ono Fuyumi were to write your sister a letter, your sister is 'uchi' enough that it would or at least could be spoken of with the directional -kureru as if you were a direct beneficiary.

Imouto ni tegami wo kaitekureta.

She wrote a letter to my sister. You may even feel at one with fandom enough to say as much if talking about another fan you've never even met receiving a letter. This would not be the case if discussing that Ono Fuyumi wrote a letter with no connection to you, such as her accountant.

Dareka ni tegami wo kaita.

She wrote a letter to somebody.

Note that while you probably are more endeared towards Ono Fuyumi than some unknown fan and would wish more well upon her than you would a stranger fellow fan, the fan is more in your sphere of reference. Ono being soto or 'other' isn't a matter of amicability alone, nor are the Yamairi three necessarily disliked as a layer of soto. 

 This is not only in spoken Japanese but commonly in narratives, displaying where sympathies are expected to lie. While "

Kyousuke-kun ni kiiteinai

" (They didn't listen to Kyousuke-kun) is grammatically correct, it may mark the writer as foreign for how much more natural "

Kyousuke-kun ni kiiitekurenai

" is, presuming a greater sense of 'ours' or 'uchi' for the reader in Kyousuke. 

There are other directional verbs which are based on the stations of the giver, receiver, speaker and related formalities, but we'll stick to the basics here in order to emphasize the uchi/soto concept.  You'd probably use more formal inflections for the actions taken by Ono Fuyumi, or anyone you'd address as -sensei]

"Haa... yes."

"The village is the same. In Sotoba we have a district determined by the administration, and that's a clearly defined boundary. But the image of the village's boundary is vague. That is to say, the village itself has an 'inner' or involvements of its own."

"Its own company, its own school..."

"Yes, just like that. We recognize the 'inner' or 'own' portion of the village but if there's an 'inner' or 'own' there in theory must be an 'outer' or 'other', thus in the end, the world is split into two, the inner and the outer, and in doing that, there's the question of whether that barrier is inner or outer."

"Haa, that's certainly...."

"That's what it means to draw a conceptional line like that. What's white is over here, what isn't white we'll push over here as black. If you do that in the end you have vaguely gray remains that you can neither call white nor black. In other words it's the grey zone that separates the image into two parts. That grey at times--depending on what you're comparing it to, it can become white or it can become black."

"Ah, that could be the case at times, couldn't it?"

"What we imagine as the boundary of 'inner, belonging to the village' isn't clearly defined as inside itself. It's surrounded in that grey zone. This vague gray zone is a barrier, and a barrier is ultimately both inner and outer. The traveler's guardians are the gods of that boundary. Placed between the inner and outer, ours and others, the gods themselves are that boundary."

"Huh...."

"So the traveler's guardians protect the 'ours' from invading hindrances from the outside, that is to say evils, and rgwt usher in good harvests, at the same time being classified as an evil spirit themselves. This duality of those stone traveler's guardians' has, since times immemorial, made those stones into the barrier between those things which have life and those which do not. That's why stones, stone monuments and stone Jizo have been set up around the barrier of the village as traveler's guardian deities."

"Ah, the memorial services center around those traveler's guardian deities then, making them offerings. While doing that, we wave the Betto around the village, drawing out the impurities and evils, the insects and the disease, casting it into the barrier. Now that you mention it, that kind of festival certainly involved taking it outside of the village to dispose of it, but in a way it wasn't really outside."

Hirosawa smiled broadly. "That's right. That's precisely the duality of the barrier. In the village, Oni are a metaphor for disease. The Oni go along with the Betto out to the village border. While we do that, we do the Uppo dance to step into and purify the inner or our own portion of that border."

"I see, Oni are outer and other, good fortune is the inner and ours."

Yuuki smiled, making Hirosawa smile as well.

"Even now," Hirosawa said with a gentle laugh. "this village performs a festival like that with great religious zeal. To those of the village, there's a strong feeling of 'inner' or 'us'. To put it another way, they're isolated from the 'outer' or 'others'."

"Ah.... I think that's something I understand."

Hirosawa sighed, gazing into his coffee glass.

"Yamairi was a community on the verge of extinction. There were three people left, and being geographically isolated as well, I think there was a sense of separation from those of the village. If you were to ask if Yamairi was inside or outside of the village, then by its history and by the administrative distinctions, you would have to call it inside. But, somewhere beyond conscious thought, I think there's a sense that it's outside somewhere, an other."

Yuuki nodded, "Ah. It's a far cry from the image of inner or us, it's become a border itself, Yamairi."

"That's what I think. The elderly died in Yamairi, and because the people are 'ours' it's a pure and real tragedy. Three old people out on their own, with nobody to care for them, dying in their desertion. But, while it is a tragedy as something personal, internal, if we set it as outside for a moment, it becomes nothing more than an event that happened across the shore. That said, if something happens across the shore, a tragedy is still a tragedy. When we set eyes on a calamity in a foreign country, it's a tragedy, we think 'those poor people', we have cognizance that it's a tragedy for the other side. A certain sense of reality, of its relation to us is missing but we accept that it is a tragedy, we react to it, we hold an awareness of it as a tragedy."

"But, Yamiri wasn't outside and they weren't others either?"

"That's true. Yamairi was the border. Neither inner nor outer, ours nor others. It isn't inside or personal to treat it with solemnity. That said, it's not far enough outside not to hold an awareness of it, not to make a fuss about it."

"Ah... is that right. I see."

"That's probably why the way they're handling Yamairi seems so hopelessly flippant. And while a funeral is a type of religious service, any ritual makes an ordinary day into the extraordinary day. In a way it's a festival. A great number of people have gathered around to participate in one ceremony, there's no denying that that is one meaning to the word festival. And then another something unusual comes bounding in. It isn't completely unrelated, but this abnormality is one that's at a safe distance. So then we have what's known as synergy---it would probably be impossible to keep it from exciting them."

"I suppose so...." Yuuki said with a nod. I see, that's what it is, he thought. While he accepted it, it was true that somewhere in his heart was a despondency.